Youth volunteers pick up the torch

For 24-year-old volunteer Raymund Ong, the drive to help others was born from life experience. Ong had just turned 20 when the cramps started. He was studying zoology at the University of Guelph and chalked the stomach pains up to too much abdominal work at the gym or midterm stress. Cancer was the furthest thing from his mind.

For 24-year-old volunteer Raymund Ong, the drive to help others was born from life experience. Ong had just turned 20 when the cramps started. He was studying zoology at the University of Guelph and chalked the stomach pains up to too much abdominal work at the gym or midterm stress. Cancer was the furthest thing from his mind.

But the cramps continued during a visit home to Toronto, and his mom took him to the emergency room. Two days later, the diagnosis was in: acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“What’s leukemia?” Ong recalls asking. “(The doctor) had to take a breath. She replied, ‘It’s a cancer.’ And that’s when it dawned on me ... it was a heavy diagnosis.”

Treatment began at Toronto Western General immediately; Ong tried to stay sunny. “I was trying to instill a sense of positivity and optimism so I could get through it.”

But a couple of weeks into treatment, a blood clot in his brain caused a stroke, leaving his left side paralyzed. Chemotherapy would continue at home for another two years, forcing him to drop his studies and live with his parents. What’s more, his friends had moved on: growing up and making plans. “I was 20. Then I turned 21. And then 22. It was still the same life,” Ong says. “All my friends were getting jobs, graduating, meeting people, dating, having a life. And I was still the same.”

The experience was a motivator for Ong. He finished treatment in January 2011, and began physiotherapy the following month. His health and his paralysis improved. That October, he ran a five-kilometre charity race.

Then, a volunteer workshop with the Canadian Cancer Society in the spring of 2011 ignited his interest. “I immediately told (staff) that I wanted to get in the network of the Canadian Cancer Society so I could start seeing how much I could help young adults affected by cancer,” Ong says.

He hopes to get involved with the
Relay For Life
campaign and speak to youth about the importance of healthy living. It’s young men and women like Ong who provide the strength, by talking openly of their experience, to youth going through cancer.